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THEY were not in a great forest when they came down the mountainside. They were in a wood where ash trees grew and bushy white-thorn trees. There was a silence there as if there was a great forest all around. It was evening, the children thought, but a very bright and clear evening. There was just one star in the sky, and it looked as if somebody was dangling it at the end of a string and would draw it up again. The Piper was not playing now; he walked along through the trees and the children followed him—all the children except John Ball, and he was standing on the mountainside at the